Patient's question:
I have a colleague who is quite close to me. We are very busy after work and don't have regular meals. She always tells me she has stomach pain and has been to the hospital many times for medication. She often takes medicine for two days and then stops for two days. Later, she had a thorough check-up at the hospital and found out she had gastric cancer. Does gastritis develop into gastric cancer?Doctor's answer:
Malignant gastric cancer originates from the mucosal epithelial cells at the outermost layer of the gastric wall and can recur in various parts of the stomach (most commonly in the antrum-pyloric region, followed by the fundus-cardia region, and slightly less in the body region). It can invade the gastric wall at different depths and extents. When the cancer focus is confined to the mucosa or submucosa, it is referred to as early gastric cancer. When it invades deeper than the muscular layer or spreads to areas outside the stomach, it is termed advanced gastric cancer. Surgical methods are determined based on a comprehensive evaluation of factors such as the preoperative and intraoperative location, size, infiltration range, resectability of the cancer focus, potential lymph node metastasis, presence of large amounts of ascites, distant metastasis, pathological type, and the continuous increase of various cancer antigens in the blood. However, since patient symptoms vary, the diagnostic methods employed also differ. Therefore, it is recommended that patients seek early diagnosis and treatment upon noticing symptoms.